Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Oliver Wintermantel – Morgan Stanley.
Oliver Wintermantel – Morgan Stanley
Steve, you mentioned in the past that you think that consolidation of the office space would be healthy. Has your opinion changed over the last few months or how do you think about that?
Steve Odland
Yes, Oliver, we've been very consistent over the past few years saying that we think consolidation should happen in this industry. As you know, it's a very fragmented industry, not only within the channel, where there are several players, but also more broadly. The channel itself only has a small market share, and so the market for office supplies is split across many channels - mass, grocery, drug, wholesalers and so forth.
Oliver Wintermantel - Morgan Stanley
Can you comment on the promotional environment and if that changed at the beginning of the year versus the fourth quarter? And could you also give us some color how the backtobusiness season was for you guys?
Steve Odland
I think that as we talked about in the division reports, we tried a lot of things to stimulate sales, and some of our loss in the fourth quarter is explainable by the promotions that we lost money on that just simply didn't work. And I think that we've said clearly that we will modify things going forward because our customers simply can't buy. We were trying to stimulate some incremental purchases, especially in technology, where we lost money on computers, and we simply can't and won't sustain that going forward.
We have said that the comp environment has improved for us in the back-to-business season, but I think if you look at how this thing started, early on we had weakness in retail and among the smallest of our customers and I think beginning in the fourth quarter we started seeing that softness spread to our largest customers. So there's a difference here as time has gone on, and I think that's consistent with what others have seen as well.
Chuck, you may want to comment on any specifics related to merchandising.
Carl Rubin
Yes. I think, Steve, you hit the nail on the head. I think in the fourth quarter we saw big ticket items across computers and printers and televisions slow dramatically. And to your point, Steve, on the first quarter of back-to-business, things have stabilized and we are seeing thus far a trend in our comp performance that's better.
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